Contributors

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

Context analysis of Nick Clegg over two debates

Our previous analysis has shown a selection of the words that have been found in context. For this analysis, we are showing figures that show the words closest in context to Nick Clegg for both the BBC Have Your Say data and the blogs from the Daily Telegraph.

A comparison between the two debates can be made and the differences between them easily spotted by eye.

It should be noted that the closer to the centre the word is, the closer in context the word is to 'Nick Clegg'. By contrast, words that appear on the edge of the circle of words are not close in context to 'Nick Clegg'. You may also spot the same word appearing more than once in the same figure - this is due to that particular word appearing in multiple contexts (i.e. in multiple discussion threads).

First off, let's look at the analysis for the BBC Have your say data from the 1st debate (click on figure to enlarge):

The analysis shows how the words 'won' and 'well' are very close to the centre, as are 'Gordon' and 'David' - unsurprising given the subject matter being analysed. This re-affirms the earlier analysis showing that the comments reflected Nick Clegg's good performance in this first debate.

The data from the Daily Telegraph also shows a similar story, with 'won' appearing close to the centre.

The picture changes after the second debate however, as can be seen in the figure below which is for data from the BBC Have your say discussion forum.

This time the word 'won' does appear but is much further away from the centre (it is in the bottom left of the circle of data). The remaining words are a mixture of positive and negative words that reflect the increased scrutiny that he is now being placed under by the electorate.

Finally let's look at the data from the Daily Telegraph.

Here the analysis shows a similar story - the strong positive words after the first debate have all but disappeared.